Priorities

[den]

There are probes orbiting Mars, landing on Mars, and driving around on Mars.

The news if full of Kylie Minogue turning 40.

Comments

[kuangning]

Enh. There are really sound reasons for not sending a manned flight to Mars just yet, not least of which is the fact that one more failure with a manned flight would set NASA back another 5-10 years or more. They're in real need of a better budget, and the only way they're going to get it (besides a change of government administration going in their favour) is with a few very public perceived victories to build support. You do that by sending robots that take pretty pictures to pique the curiosity and pride of John and Jane Q Public back at home.

[psaakyrn.livejournal.com]

My point is that NASA should've been getting better budgets to start off with, instead of having money being funneled into all sorts of other stuff. Aka the whole change of government policies and whatnot. At the current rate, NASA is just an afterthought "just to please the hippies".

[kuangning]

Amen. But they've actually had their budget slashed instead, and they're fighting the surprisingly prevalent opinion that they get a huge chunk of our budget (ie, between 10% and 50%, which is utter bollocks) and the less-prevalent-but-just-as-vocal argument that any money spent on them is money wasted.

Every time they send a mission anywhere, we get a backlash of why are we spending money on space when there are still problems here on Earth? As if NASA's budget would be all it took to fix those, or as if we can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.

Oddly enough, the same people who cry this seem to have no problem with the amount of money we pour into killing each other on a daily basis. Go figure.

< /rant>. Really. ;)